New Interface for Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Submitted by Andy on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 10:03

After Updating my Dell Mini 9 to the alpha 3 release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala last night and running all the updates, I was treated to a completely new UI for netbook-launcher. It's still unstable, but personally I think its an improvement to the last version which is high praise considering I think the current UI of the Netbook Remix in 9.04 is the most usable netbook interface on the market today.

Netbook Remix Ubuntu 9.04:

Netbook Remix Ubuntu 9.10 alpha-3 (Aug 8th 2009)

Firefox 3.5 RC2 Linux vs Windows Performance

Submitted by Andy on Sat, 06/20/2009 - 11:15

With the release of Firefox 3.5 right around the corner and the inclusion of the new Tracemonkey javascript engine, I thought I'd do a quick javascript performance comparison between the Linux and Windows versions. The hardware specs for the test machine are: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.00GHz 4 GB DDR2-667 Memory 320 GB Western Digital 5400 RPM Hard Drive The Operating Systems used for the test are: Ubuntu 9.04 32-bit Windows XP SP3 32-bit I used the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. Here are the results:

Firefox 3.5 RC2 Linux

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 2371.2ms +/- 5.0%
--------------------------------------------
3d: 323.0ms +/- 13.0%
cube: 89.4ms +/- 22.9%
morph: 83.8ms +/- 18.8%
raytrace: 149.8ms +/- 17.4%
access: 373.4ms +/- 7.9%
binary-trees: 104.6ms +/- 15.5%
fannkuch: 142.6ms +/- 10.3%
nbody: 93.0ms +/- 24.7%
nsieve: 33.2ms +/- 3.1%
bitops: 97.0ms +/- 9.7%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 3.6ms +/- 18.9%
bits-in-byte: 17.4ms +/- 31.0%
bitwise-and: 5.4ms +/- 12.6%
nsieve-bits: 70.6ms +/- 17.2%
controlflow: 80.8ms +/- 24.7%
recursive: 80.8ms +/- 24.7%
crypto: 156.4ms +/- 16.2%
aes: 91.6ms +/- 31.0%
md5: 41.6ms +/- 32.5%
sha1: 23.2ms +/- 30.6%
date: 315.4ms +/- 12.2%
format-tofte: 179.4ms +/- 8.1%
format-xparb: 136.0ms +/- 24.7%
math: 177.4ms +/- 11.0%
cordic: 98.2ms +/- 10.8%
partial-sums: 58.2ms +/- 23.1%
spectral-norm: 21.0ms +/- 29.9%
regexp: 132.6ms +/- 20.1%
dna: 132.6ms +/- 20.1%
string: 715.2ms +/- 3.4%
base64: 46.8ms +/- 32.0%
fasta: 166.0ms +/- 17.7%
tagcloud: 190.8ms +/- 8.2%
unpack-code: 216.0ms +/- 5.5%
validate-input: 95.6ms +/- 17.8%

Firefox 3.5 RC2 Windows

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 2076.4ms +/- 5.2%
--------------------------------------------
3d: 243.2ms +/- 8.9%
cube: 61.6ms +/- 20.1%
morph: 70.8ms +/- 7.8%
raytrace: 110.8ms +/- 15.5%
access: 249.6ms +/- 9.9%
binary-trees: 74.6ms +/- 28.1%
fannkuch: 99.0ms +/- 27.0%
nbody: 50.6ms +/- 15.2%
nsieve: 25.4ms +/- 28.7%
bitops: 74.2ms +/- 33.3%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 4.4ms +/- 92.9%
bits-in-byte: 16.6ms +/- 63.9%
bitwise-and: 4.2ms +/- 117.3%
nsieve-bits: 49.0ms +/- 34.1%
controlflow: 51.6ms +/- 12.1%
recursive: 51.6ms +/- 12.1%
crypto: 91.4ms +/- 12.9%
aes: 50.0ms +/- 11.4%
md5: 27.0ms +/- 21.4%
sha1: 14.4ms +/- 24.9%
date: 283.4ms +/- 10.0%
format-tofte: 131.0ms +/- 10.3%
format-xparb: 152.4ms +/- 14.6%
math: 86.6ms +/- 24.2%
cordic: 51.0ms +/- 43.0%
partial-sums: 25.0ms +/- 24.4%
spectral-norm: 10.6ms +/- 13.4%
regexp: 323.2ms +/- 13.2%
dna: 323.2ms +/- 13.2%
string: 673.2ms +/- 10.6%
base64: 33.2ms +/- 37.4%
fasta: 124.8ms +/- 15.5%
tagcloud: 202.0ms +/- 9.5%
unpack-code: 207.2ms +/- 16.6%
validate-input: 106.0ms +/- 36.4%

This is a dramatic boost from version 3.0.11 which clocked in with a total time of 4786.9ms on the version that ships with Ubuntu 9.04. However, the Windows version is faster than the Linux version which seems to be par for the course for Mozilla. Hopefully there will be more tweaking before the final release to bring the two versions closer in performance, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Maybe someday the Linux version of Firefox won't be treated as a second class citizen, especially considering it's by far the most popular browser on the platform.

Convert Your Filesystem from ext3 to ext4

Submitted by Andy on Thu, 04/23/2009 - 18:31

Ubuntu 9.04 the "Jaunty Jackalope" was released today. It's got a lot of great new features including a new notification system on the desktop and support for cloud computing with full support for the Amazon EC2 API through the Eucalyptus project on the server.

One of the big features of this release is support for the recently released ext4 filesystem. Ext4 has a ton of great features and helps bring a modern filesystem implementation to Linux. One of the great features of ext4 is the ability to convert an existing ext3 filesystem to ext4 without losing any data. If you are thinking of upgrading your Ubuntu 8.10 machine to Ubuntu 9.04 and want to upgrade your filesystem as well, here's how to do it.

First you're going to want to upgrade your system from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 if you haven't already done so. Follow the instructions here to perform the upgrade.

NOTE :: Make sure to back up all important data before upgrading the distribution or the filesystem

Next, boot the computer from the Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop CD Once you are booted into the live environment, run the following command replacing /dev/DEV with the drive partition that you want to upgrade.

tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/DEV

NOTE :: the -O is the capital letter O, not zero

You then need to run fsck to fix up some on-disk structures that tune2fs has modified.

e2fsck -fD /dev/DEV

Next, mount the drive

mount -t ext4 /dev/DEV /mnt

Edit fstab and change ext3 to ext4 on the drive you upgraded

UUID=xxxx / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Finally, you need to run grub-install on your new partition. The version of grub that shipped with Ubuntu 8.10 cannot boot from ext4 partitions so if you skip this step, your computer won't boot.

grub-install /dev/DEV --root-directory=/mnt --recheck

Now reboot the computer and enjoy your new ext4 filesystem.

NOTE :: By enabling the extents feature new files will be created in extents format, but this will not convert existing files to use extents. Non-extent files can be transparently read and written by Ext4.